Because Love Never Dies
by jaded79
Summary: This is a spin-off story from a Carol/Daryl fic titled "Faith, Hope, and Love". It takes place from the viewpoint of their daughter, Daisy Dixon, roughly sixteen years after the events of Faith, Hope, and Love.


**A/N – Hello readers! So if you've never read a story called Faith, Hope, and Love, then this story might feel a little strange to you. Faith, Hope, and Love was my first fic on here – a Carol and Daryl fic that spanned 63 chapters and lots of drama. First off, I need to give credit to ****Viking Death March**** for the idea of a spin-off from Faith, Hope, and Love about the Dixon kids. I definitely didn't plan this story, ****Viking Death March**** gave me the idea and I ran with it. This story picks up about sixteen years after the end of Faith, Hope, and Love, and revolves around the point of view of Daryl and Carol's daughter Daisy Dixon. This is kind of a test chapter to see if anyone thinks this story would be worth reading, and if it is, I'll keep going with it and see where it takes me. **

**Disclaimer - I don't own any of The Walking Dead Characters from the TV show or the comic. If you've seen it on TV or read it in a book, I don't own it. **

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Prologue

I've always considered my parents as the benchmark for how love should be. How love should feel; how love should look. I suppose a lot of kids have been known to do that. At least back when the world was all about school and work, politics and play, sporting events on weekends, and television… oh I've often wondered about television. I don't know anything about the way things used to be though. I wasn't around back then. All of those things – those things that were once so important to people – well, I don't know a thing about them. Except what I've heard. I didn't live in that world; I live in this one, and this one is nothing like that one at all.

I'm sixteen, and I was born after the end of the world – or rather, while it was ending. Folks today refer to it as the zombie apocalypse. I don't know how it was back in the beginning. I know I was born when things were better… when there were safe camps and a way to keep the walkers at bay. The safe camps ended when I was about five. I remember because I can still smell the fires as our camp burned around us, as my father held me close to his chest and ran, my mother not far behind holding my brother. I remember the screams for the others… for our friends, our group. We'd been a large group back then. Grandpa Hershel, although he wasn't really my grandfather – he was Bethany's - and his wife Grandma Becka… we'd seen them first, running out of their home, hurrying to any injured that they could see just like the doctor and nurse that they were. We lost Hershel that night, the night the camp was overrun, by walkers and humans alike. You see, with the safe camps came rebels, people who didn't want us to be safe, people who wanted what we had, demanded a right to it, and took it if we wouldn't give. They took our camp in one night, disbanded the whole place with fire and chaos. By the time we reached the closest camp over, it had been overrun as well.

We were a group of twelve then – my mom and dad; my twin brother Merle; my older sister Rose; Grandma Becka (we lost her not too long after that first night); Uncle Carl; Aunt Andrea; Uncle Teddy (everyone else called him T-Dog, but he was Teddy to me); Aunt Maggie – she was Hershel's daughter – and her husband, my Uncle Glenn, their daughter Bethany; and Aunt Astrid. We'd been a camp of a hundred. We had no idea who else had made it out, if anyone even had. We just knew that we were on our own.

Luckily, my dad was always kind of an expert at that. I lost him when I was 10. He'd been shot through the eye during a scouting mission around a nearby rebel camp. My mother was heartbroken. I lost her when I was 12. We were attacked, holed up in a small campsite, and suddenly attacked by rebels. We'd been unprepared, our armory had run dry months before. We were separated, I remember one moment her hand was in mine, and the next she was gone. We went back after it was over, found her lying amongst the ruins. My Uncle Carl wouldn't let Merle and me stay while someone put her down before she turned. He'd ushered us away, hugged us, told us we'd be all right – he'd lost his dad at the same age, and then his mom too, not much longer thereafter.

My name is Daisy Dixon, and my parents were Daryl and Carol Dixon. I don't think my mom was always a Dixon, but she was for as long as I knew her.

"Daise," Merle's voice jarred me from my internal thoughts and I looked over at him. We were sitting in the dark beside a smoldering campfire, both unwilling to admit we were tired, as the group planned our next move. Merle made a motion to the others sitting with us and I turned my head to look at Uncle Carl as he spoke.

"We were smart to head North," he was saying, "and I think we should keep going with that plan. We've seen that the walkers are slower in the cold, and the rebels lay a little lower in the winter than in the heat. It stands to reason we might get a little less discord if we were a bit more north of here." We were in North Carolina now, just to the east of where the City of Charlotte used to be… before it became more rubble than city.

"So where do we go? How North are we talking?," that was Rose who spoke, my sister. Her dark black hair was tied in a loose ponytail, wisps of it falling out and into her face as she spoke, her movements animated. I think she's seventeen now, but we don't really know her age for sure.

"Maine," Uncle Teddy said, "I had cousins up there… if – and it's a big if – they're still alive, maybe they'd still be there."

"It'll take us weeks, maybe months to get that far," Maggie said. Her face was pale and drawn. Her adopted sister Astrid had died only a few weeks ago and she wasn't dealing with it well. Bethany sat at her right, wedged between Maggie and Glenn, looking sweet and innocent as always with her dark pixie cut and hazel eyes. I don't think Bethany has ever taken down a walker… I've taken down five. Maggie keeps her close, doesn't let Bethany take any risks. Especially now. Not after losing Astrid the way we did.

She'd gone down by the creek to wash up. She was only supposed to be gone a little while. We heard the screams within five minutes. Terrified screams… begging… I don't really want to talk about what I heard. Glenn had carried the body back, his jacket draped over Astrid to hide the nakedness. Maggie had sobbed for days, didn't eat for what felt like weeks but was probably only hours. Glenn fretted over it, and poor Bethany started chewing her hair.

Merle and I were put together better than that. We were Dixons. Dixons don't cry. My dad told me once that people were going to die, it was just the world we lived in, people were going to die and they'd do it way before we would ever be ready for it. He taught us to be tough, to be strong. I was using weapons with ease by the time I was six… not a gun, of course, although I am plenty good with a gun now. It was knives at six. We were using crossbows by the time we were seven, and our training kept going from there. After my father was gone, my mother took over. Dixons are strong. Merle and I are strong. We can handle anything, I'm sure of it.

Andrea took the seat in the dirt next to me, coming back from where she'd been on watch. She caught my eye and made a face. I smiled. Aunt Andrea had taken it upon herself to keep watch over Merle and me since my mom had died. She always said my daddy would be rolling in his grave if he knew. They never really got along, but they'd both loved my mom very much. Andrea had been her best friend.

"Keeping Maine in our minds sounds good and all," Andrea said, addressing the others, "but I think we need to go where there's people… people like us, that is. Not rebels but normal people just trying to survive. The safe camp was good when we had it… you all remember, it's been eleven years but I know you all remember. It was safe for a reason – because there were lots of us. Because we worked together. It seems to me we'd be wise to try that again."

"But the rebels…," Rose said.

"Can't be everywhere," Andrea responded. "And they can't all be like the ones we've come across here and since Georgia. The world can't be all full of lunatics at this point. I mean, we're still here, aren't we?" There was a chuckle among the group.

"You're the biggest lunatic of them all, Andrea," Teddy said softly with an easygoing grin.

Andrea grinned back. "Don't I know it. But I'm serious, you guys. We've done the lone wolf pack thing. And it's been okay, we've survived… most of us, but it's time for something bigger, something stronger."

"So we head North," Carl said then, his voice decisive – he was, after all, the one in charge – "towards Maine, but we keep our eyes open, see what we can find out about the people in the towns we pass, see if there's any groups out there, groups like us."

"I can guarantee there's no groups like _us_ anywhere in the world." That was Merle, my brother. His tone was cynical as it always was… he had too much Dixon in him and not enough of what my mother was. My mom always said that he was the spitting image of his ornery uncle, the original Merle Dixon, my dad's brother. But we'd never met him; he died long before we were born. I knew Merle's meaning though, hidden deep in the cynicism – we were special, there couldn't be anyone else like us.

We were silent a moment and then Teddy started to laugh, his chuckle suddenly infectious as the others joined in.

"Maybe not, Merle," Teddy said then, clapping his hand against my brother's back, "but here's hoping there are groups _better_ than us."

Merle gave a sideways smile then, kept his head down and his eyes on the dirt in front of him as he traced a line in it with a twig.

"So…," Andrea said, looking around at everyone.

"North.," Carl said finally. "Now let's get some shut-eye before we've all gotta be up at the crack of dawn. We head out first thing. Who's on watch?"

"Me," Glenn mumbled with a yawn and then a frown.

I watched the others disperse from where I still sat, as they all filed toward their respective places – tents and sleeping bags strewn about in a semi-circle. We aren't a large group. We are more nomads than anything, moving around to more locations than I could even count at this point. But we didn't need a home because _we_ were home to each other. As long as we had each other we were home.

My mom would have liked that, if she were still here. And my dad… he'd have pretended he didn't, grumbled about the group going soft, but he'd have liked it to.

I stood up, brushed the dirt off the back of my jeans, and smiled to myself as I gazed down at our dampened fire. My mind wanders for a moment and I think back on a night almost ten years ago. Our tent had smelled like mold and grass. I stood in the doorway, framing the small entrance with my tiny six year old body and watched as my parents danced outside by the flickering campfire. My mother's hand twined with my father's, his other hand on her hip, and her other arm outstretched across his shoulders. They danced to the sound of the crickets, to the serene sound of the Georgian summer breeze, and to the music of the love in their hearts. My dad dipped my mother back at the end of their silent song and kissed her, a deep and loving kiss. The kind of kiss that plagues my mind now, invades my heart and squeezes it until my chest aches. The kind of kiss I long for someday - the kiss of someone I truly love. A love like my parents had… the standard I hold against all loves, real and fiction.

As I shuffled my way to my sleeping bag near Merle's, to my tattered duffle bag of clothes and well-worn books, I frown and ponder the idea that somewhere out there might be other groups… with other people… good people… and maybe someone I could love like my mother had loved my father, like my father had loved my mother, and like they'd both loved Rose, Merle, and me. The world could be a lonely place without love, I read that in a book once. My parents were gone, their love just a memory in my mind now, but I didn't really believe that. I didn't really give in to the thought that their love was gone. Because love is never gone. Love never dies, not as long as there's someone out there still thinking of it, still remembering.


End file.
